Klaus Kinski

Actor

Without a doubt the most intense and perhaps insane actor ever to grace the silver screen, Klaus Kinski tapped into his dark inner reaches to deliver a number of spellbinding performances that often bordered on ... Read more »

Without a doubt the most intense and perhaps insane actor ever to grace the silver screen, Klaus Kinski tapped into his dark inner reaches to deliver a number of spellbinding performances that often bordered on psychosis. With a deep furrowed brow overhanging large malefic eyes that heightened his manic intensity while betraying no inner vulnerability, Kinski had a long, notorious career that both fed on and was complicated by his monumental ego. Though he appeared in over 250 films, the five he made with German compatriot, director Werner Herzog, were the stuff of filmmaking legend. Their combative and codependent collaboration started with "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972), and resumed years later with "Nosferatu the Vampyre" (1979), "Woyzeck" (1979) and "Fitzcarraldo" (1982). All throughout their partnership, both concurrently despised and needed one another, creating an artistic energy neither matched with any other collaborator. Their long-running partnership, which also was a stormy friendship, generated the best work either made in their careers - though often at great emotional, psychological and even physical harm - and ended 15 years after it began with "Cobra Verde" (1987), their least accomplished effort. Though together for only a fraction of their creative outputs, it was impossible to talk of either one without mentioning the other. For Kinski, the collaboration with Herzog proved fruitful artistically, but damaging and soul-wrecking in private.